Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters

[156] made up of The divine tragedy, the golden legend, and New England tragedies, added little to a reputation won in other fields. His sonnets, particularly those upon Chaucer, Milton, the Divina Commedia, a Nameless grave, Felton, Sumner, nature, My books, are among the imperishable treasures of the English language. In descriptive pieces like Keramos and The Hanging of the Crane, in such personal and occasional verses as The Herons of Elmwood, the Fiftieth birthday of Agassiz, and the noble Morituri Salutamus written for his classmates in 1875, he exhibits his tenderness of affection and all the ripeness of his technical skill. But it was as a lyric poet, after all, that he won and held his immense audience throughout the Englishspeaking world. Two of the most popular of all his early pieces, The Psalm of life and Excelsior, have paid the price of a too apt adjustment to the ethical mood of an earnest moment in our national life. We have passed beyond them. And many readers may have outgrown their youthful pleasure in Maidenhood, the rainy day, the bridge, the day is done, verses whose simplicity lent themselves temptingly to parody. Yet such poems as The Belfry of Bruges, Seaweed, the fire of Driftwood, the Arsenal at Springfield, My lost youth,